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Today’s Fitzsimon File is about the difference between the House Speaker Thom Tillis who speaks at public town hall meetings and the one who shows up to talk to the Republican faithful.

The column is based on a video posted on YouTube of a recent appearance by Tillis at Mars Hill College in Madison County. You watch the video for yourselves. Here is part one and here is part two. The videos run about 20 minutes combined.

Part two is where Tillis agrees that drug testing all state employees is a good idea and says we need to “divide and conquer the people who are on (public) assistance.” Adam Searing just posted that clip on the Pulse and will be putting up other notable comments as the day continues.

Tillis said the short session next summer would be the shortest in history and that lawmakers would only take up regulatory reform and adjustments to the budget. But then he added that he hoped three constitutional amendments would be on the ballot next fall, term limits for legislative leaders, eminent domain, and a right-to-work amendment.

It’s not clear when lawmakers will take those amendments up if not in the short session. Maybe there are more special sessions planned.

Drug testing people on public assistance and dividing the poor and people with a disability appears to be on the 2013 agenda.

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[…] helpers are already trying to spin the story as mere linguistic clumsiness, but anyone who watches the speech gets a very different impression — namely that Tillis thought he was speaking to an extremely […]